


Dates and Promises

by cozy_tea



Category: Tales of - Fandom, Tales of Vesperia
Genre: Cute, First Date, Fluff, Just some sweet indulgent stuff guys, Kissing, M/M, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:22:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23078536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cozy_tea/pseuds/cozy_tea
Summary: Oh god he was actually doing it, and he could not believe he was so fucking nervous. It’s not as if Harry didn’t know anything about Karol. They'd been friends for years. Surely he knew what Karol liked, what he didn't, what to do. Surely ... things would go alright.
Relationships: Karol Capel & Harry Whitehorse, Karol Capel/Harry Whitehorse
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	Dates and Promises

He was doing it.

Oh god, he was _actually_ doing it, and he could not believe he was _so_ fucking nervous. It’s not as if Harry didn’t know Karol’s favorites, as he packed them up into a small basket, blanket tucked against the lid. It wasn’t like Karol wasn’t an adult now, didn’t _talk to him_ about this, didn’t make It clearly obvious it was okay and _he_ wanted to try.

It didn’t stop the stupid little butterflies that spun around in his stomach. Near 27, and he _still_ wasn’t getting rid of them. Harry was such a mess, wasn’t he?

( What could Karol _possibly_ see in him? )

There’s one last double-check. Drinks, check, food, check, sweets, check … He feels there’s something else he needs to do.

Ah. Right.

Harry fiddles with the thought. Roses are too cliche and far too romantic a gesture for right now. Far too ‘sweet’. He needed something that could be seen a little more platonically and not so. _Bam_ , you’re the thing I think about before I go to sleep.

He could see it. The twisting face of embarrassment and quick looking back and forth Karol would do. ( A soft whisper of: “ _Nobody saw you coming, right?_ ” before he’d relent and accept them out of kindness and gingerly hide it in his room in a vase. )

So no. No roses. But, maybe he could do something like …

…Yes. That was perfect. Just one, to not overwhelm him. He walks out of his home, and the flower is an easy find. The woman behind the cart who sold it to him smiled and wished him luck. Harry smiled back, his cheeks tinged ever so lightly.

“Just for a friend.“

“Well, tell that pretty lass she’s lucky to have friends so thoughtful.” 

Harry ducks his head, chuckling and waving a hand behind him. “I will, I will.” He won’t.

He shows up at the door of Brave Vesperia’s ‘home away from home’. That’s what Karol called it, anyway, for everyone else, for him, it _was_ his home, and most likely where he’d keel over, comes the morbidly amused thought. There was just too many times Harry had shown up and found him dead asleep or passed out in some odd place, in some odd position, in his HQ for it not to be.

Harry knocks.

There’s some silence before someone opens the door. Yuri Lowell, standing there, yawning, before rubbing at an eye. He stares at Harry, who’s holding a basket in one arm, flower hid behind a held down pant leg.

Yuri’s older. _So much_ older, it’s a little debilitating. The gray that’s edged his scalp, the softness in gray eyes from adulthood, _fatherhood_ , if Harry remembered some of Karol’s letters correctly. Ten years could do a lot to a person.

“You’ve grown.” Yuri leans against the side of the archway, arms crossed over his chest, light grin tipping on his lips.

Harry cocks a brow. “Or you’ve gotten shorter.”

He’d gotten rather tall, actually. Filled out a good chunk more. _Not as much_ as Don was, but he was a figure to not be looked down on as he had been. Able to _properly_ hold onto that blade now at his back. It used to be near as long as his leg. Now it was about half of that.

“How’re your letters doing to our dear Commandant?”

“Oh, just spectacular. I think I’m breakin’ him down slowly.”

The chuckle that slipped was enough to relax Harry’s defenses a bit. His smile easing. “Hey, I made plans with Karol today.” He gestures with the basket. “Draggin’ him out. We’ve been eating at Saggitarius too often. Gonna get fat if we ain’t careful.”

There’s. Another gaze, following to the basket. Before it goes to look for his other hand. A bemused smile.

“Yeah, sure.”

Yuri disappears into the guild house, the door closing behind.

Harry counts.

He hears the shuffling before the thuds hit the floorboards.

Less than three seconds … Impressive.

Karol slides into his sight and there’s a pause, between them both. Karol looks flushed, looking Harry up and down quizzically. Harry raises the basket with a four-finger wave. 

“Yo.”

“Y-you, Yuri said-“ There’s a thick swallow, before Karol is slightly settling. “-You didn’t say anything yet, right ?”

Harry shook his head. “Nope. But c’mon, he’s probably jus’ teasin’ you.” He doesn’t know what Yuri said exactly, but… There was a concern. Yuri, despite being a _very good_ guild member, was a capital person. He didn’t have the same perspective as either Harry or Karol, having grown up within the guilds influence.

Certain things just weren’t to be said or done.

Still, Harry gestures light with his full hand. “Le’s get outta here. I can already hear him snickering from a mile away.”

Harry wasn’t nervous about _Yuri Lowell_. Oh no he wasn’t. Yuri was _easy_. ( Now. ) It was Karol who he was far more worried about. Karol who’s flushed face slowly steadies to relax, before he nods and walks in close to him. In step. 

Karol grew too. He has a bit of facial hair now as well. Warm, honey brown eyes, lanky, he was _always_ so lanky. You’d think his metabolism would catch up with him one day, but it hadn’t yet, and Harry was almost wanting to say it _never would_. 

It’s a quiet moment, them wakling, Harry watching Karol out of the side of his eye before Karol coughs, and Harry’s face flushes. Looking now, exactly directly in front of him.

His eyes had been starting to drift, and with them, his head to help it, and…

Oh christ, this was the _first date_ , he could be a little more classy than that, couldn’t he? Apparently not. He hadn’t really _seriously_ dated for ages. One or two-off flings. No-one he was interested in sleeping with, and no one he was extremely attracted to, too hung up on his age-old childhood crush. 

How sad did that sound? Near eight years of pining.

Shaken off, Harry and Karol are headed outside the city and towards a small hill off to the south of Dahngrest. An old tree sits there, sun beginning to set as Harry placed out the cloth, placed out the food and, for extra flair…

“I meant t’give this to you back at Brave Vesperia, but with big brother watchin’, thought you’d like it better here.”

A daisy.

Nothing big, nothing over the top. Just a thing Harry might do.

Karol carefully collects it in his hands. There’s…a touch of surprise in his face. Almost uncertain if he should — “Thank you.” It’s an earnest response.

Harry gestures. “May I?” Karol offers it back, and Harry takes it before carefully placing it in the brunette’s hair. 

… Karol’s flushed face was funny.

Harry couldn’t help the soft snort of a chuckle.

The daisy in his hair didn’t bother him and they continued. Harry insisted he keep it in until they headed back. Nowhere else to put it, you know?

Karol agreed.

They stayed out there for hours.

Food, drink, sweets, and when the stars came out, they lay back. Watching them through the edges of tree leaves. Conversation came and went. Moments of silence edged into a calm of soft smiles and glances, brushing hair back behind an ear or back out of their face.

But it was the moment they lay there, talking idly about their work, Harry’s hand wandered, finally. Pinky outstretching, before interlocking with Karol’s nervously. Almost awkward and a little blundering, but…

Karol stopped speaking. Harry garnered a glance, and he was a little flushed, before looking at Harry. As if _asking_ what he was doing without saying anything and…

“Pinkie promises, right? Y’said you could never break them.”

Karol glanced down to their interlocked pinkies. “What … promise are ya makin’ ?”

Harry swallowed, a little thick. “I just thought … if you can’t break a pinkie promise, maybe. A silent one … it’s just . Our promise. Never to be broken.”

He was bad at this, he _knew he was_ , but Karol agreed to go out with him so really this was all on Karol for thinking Harry could have a coherent thought.

Karol’s finger tightens a little bit around his. “Okay. _Weird_.” But he wasn’t pulling away. “You’re gonna have to promise to explain that better later.”

Harry laughed, an escalation of air from his lungs, embarrassed, blustered. “Yeah. Yeah I’ll explain that later.” A pause. “Karol?”

“Hm?”

It’s quiet, what he does. Lifts the interlocked pinkies and intertwines their fingers, and presses his lips against the back of his palm. Karol’s expression had gone from confused, (tightened brows, pursed lip, bemused glitter in his eyes, way his cheeks lifted ever so slightly) to _surprised_ embarrassment. The red in his cheeks sucking to the tips of his ears.

Harry takes it a step further. Rolling over now to get _close as he could_ , before he gently places a kiss to Karol’s cheek … and, at no _telling him off_ , a soft press of lips.

No rush. No hurry. Just an easing of a new ‘norm’. 

And, when they go back to laying besides one another. Karol and Harry are both red faced , holding hands.

A promise, never to be broken.

**Author's Note:**

> HOLY SHIT. Okay this is 100% self indulgent fluff and I will admit to that. Just. Throw my heart up on there with these two.


End file.
